"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her fall is not certainly known by the saints, nor at all believed by her; wherefore her plagues must come unlooked for by her. And as to the saints, their guesses as to the time of her ruin must needs be conjectural and uncertain. For her part, she shall say, and that when she stands where she must suddenly fall, "I shall be a lady ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... her force and her ambition with the alarm generally entertained of that encroaching and immense power. He even thinks that, even if she possessed Constantinople, she could not long retain it. As all this is future, and of course conjectural, we may legitimately express our doubts of any authority on the subject. That Russia does not think with the Marquis is evident, for all her real movements for the last fifty years have been but preliminaries to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the rallying sound throughout the country now was, "Protestant ascendancy." The Protestants of Great Britain were called on to bend before Irish rebels and seditious demagogues, and that too on mere conjectural grounds of imagined expediency. It was said, "You are to examine two dangers, and that the danger of disturbance was greater than any that could flow from concession." When the latter clanger, however, was the sacrifice of the Protestant ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... what it purports to be,—not a collection of elaborate essays devoted to metaphysical analysis or to conjectural emendations of doubtful lines,—but a series of ideal portraits of the women of Shakspeare's plays. The reader may fancy himself led by an intelligent cicerone who pauses before each picture and with well-chosen words tells enough of the story to present the heroine, and then gives her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Sir Robert, after turning pale and saying "God bless my soul! you don't mean it," to the doctor, rallied from the shock as soon as he had left the house, and refused to believe anything of the kind, talked about "the art conjectural," and did all he could to impress this view on Miss Noel, who promptly gave herself up as lost, told him that she had made her will "before leaving town for the North" the year before, asked that her body might be "taken back to dear old England," if this could be done without risk to others, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... morning services. Passing to the south we enter the ambulatory. It is vaulted in stone, and the plain horseshoe arches at the end without any ribs (see illustration), are worthy of notice. In this space several interesting relics of the old abbey, and some conjectural models of the church in its former condition, may be seen. Here, too, is a fifteenth-century walnut wood chest: and here are two stone cressets, possibly used by the builders, which when done with were built by them into the walls, where they remained until ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... he said nervously, "I begin to fear that perhaps after all I am unworthy. Now about those Articles of Religion: I may perhaps have given some of them a conjectural and commentating assent. Possibly I ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... arrived at that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... power must be snatched from the hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil. Their method of working through an artificially picked Pre-Parliament and a conjectural Constituent Assembly, had to be opposed by our political method of mobilizing the forces around the Soviets, through the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and through insurrection. This could be done only by means of an open break, before the eyes of the entire ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... mentioned above and to later works bearing on the subject have been inserted in the hope that others, more leisured and more competent, may supplement them by further research, and convert those portions of the narrative which are at present largely conjectural from story ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... the breast of the unhappy minister a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance—which he afterward, in so many futile methods, followed out—by inflicting ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... whatever. Again, there is the fact that he declined to act as a delegate to the proposed Reform convention, as subsequently mentioned in the text. But there is no need to resort to circumstantial or conjectural evidence. We have the testimony of Mackenzie himself, who, after his return to Canada, was ready enough to betray the secrets of his somewhile coadjutors, and who would have been only too glad if he could have pointed to Bidwell as one of the number. In his Flag of Truce, published in 1853, he ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... madly wicked. But this road for escape is closed. The mistake of Leontes was transparent to every eye but his own. The charges against Anne Boleyn were presented by two grand juries before the highest judicial tribunal in the realm. There was nothing vague, nothing conjectural. The detail was given of acts and conversations stretching over a period of two years and more; and either there was evidence for these things, or there was none. If there was evidence, it must have been close, elaborate, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... his details were rather vague. She rode in a circus or had a talking horse—he was not quite sure; and concerning her conjugal or extra-conjugal heart affairs he admitted that his information was either unauthenticated or conjectural. At any rate, she had not a shred of reputation. And she didn't want it, said Renniker; it would be as much use to her as ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... course, the Yellow Peril; but by the time that begins to be serious it is quite likely that the birth-rate will also have begun to decline among the races of Asia If not, there are other means of dealing with this question; and in any case the whole matter is too conjectural to be set up seriously as a bar to our hopes. I conclude that, though no certain forecast is possible, there is not any valid reason for regarding the possible increase of population as a serious obstacle ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... the present school edition it has been thought best to omit Heyne's notes, as they concern themselves principally with conjectural emendations, substitutions of one reading for another, and discussions of the condition of the Ms. Until Wlker's text and the photographic fac-simile of the original Ms. are in the hands of all scholars, it will be better not to introduce such matters in the school room, where ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... round—traders, Quakers, Indians, government and frontiersmen. If we can venture to centralize his invective, we should lay it specially on the heads of the class the Indians term "squaw-men"—the whites who have Indian wives and are established among the lodges. Of these he gives us a conjectural census—a hundred agencies and reservations and ten squaw-men to each. From this thousand are drawn all the interpreters; and not a solitary interpreter, Colonel Dodge insists, can be relied upon. They are, every man of them, in league ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... without the assistance of this body; that deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful opinion of the immortality ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... and is known as the gastrula, to be the ontogenetic recapitulation, maintained by tenacious heredity, of a primitive common progenitor of all the Metazoa, the Gastraea. At a later date (1895) Monticelli discovered that this conjectural ancestral form is still preserved in certain primitive Coelenterata—Pemmatodiscus, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... she pursed her lips over the conjectural annoyance. "Why, in that event, I suppose—It would be very embarrassing. You see, I don't know Mrs. Hallam; I don't know that she expects me, unless my father is already there. They are old friends—I could drive round for a while ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... our poor ancestors. How they contrived to make the ends meet, surpasses our conjectural powers. What a weary waste must have seemed expanding before their eyes, between morning and night! Don't tell us that the human female never longs for other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... possible that they may have been connected with the Yadavas, and that this may be the foundation for their claim that Krishna was of their tribe. The Dyashraya-Kavya of Hemachandra speaks of a Chordasama prince reigning near Junagarh as an Abhira and a Yadava. But this is no doubt very conjectural, and the simple fact that Krishna was a herdsman would be a sufficient reason for the Ahirs to claim connection with him. It is pointed out that the names of Abhira chieftains given in the early inscriptions are derived from the god Siva, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... occurrences, the writer has some opportunity of being correctly impressed, by means of a yearly tour through many counties of the State. He has also been particular in making inquiries of our most distinguished legal and political characters, and from some has derived conjectural estimates which were truly alarming. A few have been of the opinion, that on an average one murder a year may be charged to the account of every county in the state, making the frightful aggregate of 850 human lives sacrificed to revenge, or the victims of momentary passion, in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... industrial corporations. Even the most indefatigable tax assessors find it such a fruitless and elusive task in attempting to discover what personal property is held by these multimillionaires, that the assessment is usually a conjectural or haphazard performance. The extent of their land holdings is known; these cannot be hid in a safe deposit vault. But their other varieties of property are carefully concealed from public and official knowledge. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... stages belongs to the first kingdom and to primitive times. There is no evidence to prove whether the original edifice had, or had not, a third story; since the chamber seen by the Arabs was no doubt a late Babylonian work. The third story of the accompanying sketch must therefore be regarded as conjectural. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... test of examination after it has been placed aside, and carefully considered when the impression of novelty has worn off. I think we may safely appeal to all critics who occupy themselves much with conjectural criticism, and ask them if TIME does not frequently impair the complacency with which they regard their efforts on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... was pushed back, with a long breath; then, as he only had a little black bag to look after, we all walked together to the lodgings, while the poor man looked bewildered and unrealising under Eustace's incoherent history of the accident—a far more conjectural and confused story than ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you express, when you advise me against countenancing visiters that may discredit me. You have spoken quite out. Surely, I have had afflictions enow to strengthen my mind, and to enable it to bear the worst that can now happen. But I will not puzzle myself by conjectural evils; as I might perhaps do, if I had not enow that were certain. I shall hear all, when it is thought proper that I should. Mean time, let me say, for your satisfaction, that I know not that I have any thing criminal or disreputable to answer for either in word or deed, since the fatal 10th ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... her in a cursory view was very little; in truth, mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... g: This number is conjectural, but cannot be far from the truth, as Mr. McElvaine, the sub-agent, states that but 8 ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... wrote. In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the expense of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... arose, and the audience departed, greatly wondering at the talent displayed by Alan Fairford at his first appearance in a case so difficult and so complicated, and assigning a hundred conjectural causes, each different from the others, for the singular interruption which had clouded his day of success. The worst of the whole was, that six agents, who had each come to the separate resolution of thrusting a retaining fee into Alan's hand as he left the court, shook their heads as ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... be mistaken through carelessness, or prejudice, or any other cause of inaccuracy; yet that each of these statements respecting the authorship of the various Gospels is, on all principles of common sense, worth all the conjectural criticisms of the German and other writers, so copiously cited in ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... the numerous treatises published on this subject; but they appear to him, for the most part, to be the result not so much of experience as of vague and conjectural speculation, and not sufficiently embodying what ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... to discuss here in detail all the conjectural explanations which have been hazarded with regard to this most popular of all Venetian pictures—least of all that strange one brought forward by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the Artless and Sated Love, for which they have found so little acceptance. But we may no longer wrap ourselves in an atmosphere ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... mighty fabric? Even the infirmities and vices of the men who piled the first stones of great empires, are chronicled in history as facts deserving record. The portrait of an ancient hero is a treasure beyond value, even though the features be but conjectural. How much more precious would be a faithful portrait of his character, in which the features should be his salient traits—the expression, outline, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... primary text was handwritten, probably by a professional copyist. All line-endings were regularized by added dashes of variable length; some "real" dashes are therefore conjectural. Instead of typographic variants such as italics or boldface, some words are distinguished by underlining or smaller writing. Abbreviations such as "Mr." were written with superscripts as M^r.; they have ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... in the neighborhood knew it until long afterward—and then only in a conjectural way by piecing together fragments of rumors that floated about—young Oliver Hampden really prevented the duel. He told his father that he loved Lucy Drayton. There was a fierce ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... may be regarded perhaps more nice than wise as to why such a condition should have been appointed; and yet it will sometimes force itself upon the thoughtful mind. The answer to it must in great measure be conjectural, but may we not suppose that one design of it was to do away with the last vestige of self-righteousness in man? If Moses had struck the rock with something more powerful than the little rod, the ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... breakfast, wiping out the garrison to a rooinek, and starting on the homeward march refreshed with coffee and biltong, and driving the towns-people before them as prisoners of War. The desperate perils presented by the conjectural and largely non-existent mine were thenceforth to loom largely and luridly in the telegrams that went ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... believe; the other, which likewise I rejected, that she wanted to ingratiate herself with Brotherton. I had still, however, scarcely a doubt that she had laid the sword on my bed. Trying to imagine a connection between this possible action and Mary's mistake, I built up a conjectural form of conjectural facts to this effect—that Mary had seen her go into my room, had taken it for the room she was to share with her, and had followed her either at once—in which case I supposed Clara ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... it would then be held a proper explanation of those natural appearances with which it corresponded; and, the more of those phenomena that were thus explained by the theory, the more would that, which had been first conjectural, be converted into a theory legitimately founded ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... must be succeeded by another epoch of organisation. Having discovered the clew to the process, Saint-Simon is able to predict. As our knowledge of the universe has reached or is reaching a stage which is no longer conjectural but POSITIVE in all departments, society will be transformed accordingly; a new PHYSICIST religion will supersede Christianity and Deism; men of science will play the role of organisers which the clergy played in the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... be sure when its end was exactly "flush" with the head of the cask. The mistake of an inch—it might be several—would falsify all my computations, and render them of no use. It would not do to proceed upon such a conjectural basis, and for a while I was puzzled, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... emendations are purely conjectural; the least unsatisfactory being Cornill's: The houses ... shall be torn down against which the Chaldeans are coming to fight with mounds and sword and to fill with the corpses of men whom I have smitten in ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of conjectural possibility lay the mediate truth of the matter: which truth—thus resembling precious gold in its valueless rock matrix—lay embedded in, and was to be extracted from, the irresponsible utterances of the double row of loosely hung tongues, always at hot wagging, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... "Calendar of State Papers &c. in Venice," 1520- 6. Edited by Rawdon Brown. No. 697, London, 1869. Purchas, III. p. 809.] It is evident that the representation of the western sea, upon the map given to the king, was merely conjectural of its existence in connection with the supposed strait, laid down upon the map, according to Hakluyt. This explanation will serve also to account most readily for the partial knowledge which the letter exhibits, in regard ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... scarcely suitable. In some departments the science of the Greeks was remarkable, though it is completely overshadowed by their philosophy; yet it was largely based on what has proved to be a wrong method of procedure, viz the introspective and conjectural, rather than the inductive and experimental methods. They investigated Nature by studying their own minds, by considering the meanings of words, rather than by studying things and recording phenomena. This wrong (though by no means, on the face of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... our bond Had best be loosed for ever: but think or not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because I think, However wise, ye ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... not this conjectural history of the settlement had anything to do with the cheerful mid-winter holiday developments of the community need not be argued at length. An argument would render the truth flat and insipid if it should ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more uneasy as to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... discourage the herrings. A large velvet cloak, the worse for wear, disguised the rents of the sofa, whereon sat Mrs Gunning, majestic in another of faded purple satin, beneath which her dress remained conjectural. A noble square of Limerick point was flung over her head and hung veil-like by each ear; and, indeed, with the little cherub Lucy at her feet, she might have sat for an ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Theobald's examination of the early copies, and trusted to his own insight "to settle the genuine text." The critical ingenuity of editors and commentators, before the authority of the Folios was established, betrayed them into inevitable error. The amusing variety of conjectural readings was met by the exquisite satire of Fielding,(21) as well as by the heavy censure of Grub Street. "It is to be wished," says a catchpenny publication, "that the original text of Shakespeare were left unaltered for every English ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... these, to which I have previously referred; and their hides and tallow, when slaughtered, have hitherto composed the principal exports from the country. If I were to hazard an estimate of the number of hides annually exported, it would be conjectural, and not worth much. I would suppose, however, at this time (1847), that the number would not fall much short of 150,000, and a corresponding number of arrobas (25 pounds) of tallow. The average value of cattle is about ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question: at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and Romans?" Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races? ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... for the general features of a reflective experience. They are (i) perplexity, confusion, doubt, due to the fact that one is implicated in an incomplete situation whose full character is not yet determined; (ii) a conjectural anticipation—a tentative interpretation of the given elements, attributing to them a tendency to effect certain consequences; (iii) a careful survey (examination, inspection, exploration, analysis) of all attainable consideration which will define and clarify the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... such a country, until at length it was mapped, measured and circumnavigated. Before this process began, there was a dialectical stage, when it was hotly contested whether there could possibly be upon the globe lands antipodean to Europe; and both earlier and later there were conjectural stages when makers of maps, having no certain data, but feeling sure that the blank southern hemisphere ought to be filled up somehow, exercised a vagrant fancy and satisfied a long-felt want by decorating their drawings with representations of a Terra Incognita having not even ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... allow me to have the Greek court I mentioned?' she asked tentatively, after a long break in their discourse, as she scanned the green stones along the base of the arcade, with a conjectural countenance as to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... them with regard to the next matter of evidence which they had to offer, or to discriminate what matter ought to be urged or to be set aside: your Committee not being able to divine whether the particular evidence, which, upon a conjectural principle, they might choose to abandon, would not appear to this House, and to the judging world at large, to be admissible, and possibly decisive proof. In these straits, they had and have no choice, but either wholly to abandon the prosecution, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... people, and at the same time draws down indignation upon the priests who are the subjects of the following. These considerations necessarily determine the thought which we are to expect, namely, this—"for the people do just as their priests." This meaning is obtained by the conjectural reading W(MY KKMRYW instead of W(MKKMRYB. Comp. ver. 9. The remaining YKH must be deleted. The ordinary view of ver. 4 is hardly worth refuting. The )L YWKH, it is said, is spoken from the people's point of view. The people repel the prophet's reproach and rebuke, because (such is the interpretation ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... importance to search out the cure than the cause of this intellectual malady; and he would deserve well of this country, who, instead of amusing himself with conjectural speculations, should find means of persuading the peer to inspect his steward's accounts, or repair the rural mansion of his ancestors; who could replace the tradesman behind his counter, and send back the farmer to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the power of running quickly on the ground, by the aid of their hind legs alone, so as to compete with birds or other ground animals; and for such a change a bat seems singularly ill-fitted. These conjectural remarks have been made merely to show that a transition of structure, with each step beneficial, is a highly complex affair; and that there is nothing strange in a transition not having occurred in ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... highest. In what degree of faithfulness Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of the passage in the Adelphi taken from Diphilus, verbum de verbo in the lovelier scenes—the description of the last words of the dying Andrian, and of her funeral, for instance—remains conjectural. For us Terence shares with his master the praise of an amenity that is like Elysian speech, equable and ever gracious; like the face of the Andrian's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Mr. Forster says, "no memorial indicates the grave to the pilgrim or the stranger, nor is it possible any longer to identify the spot which received all that was mortal of the delightful writer." The present site is entirely conjectural; but it appears from the following note, communicated to us by T.C. Noble, the well-known City antiquary, that the real site was remembered as late ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... how could he? His own books were all falsified. He could place a true total before his creditors by simply adding the contents of his secret hoard to the assets of the Bank; but with this true arithmetical result he could not square his books, except by conjectural and fabricated details, which would be detected, and send him to prison; for who would believe he was lying in figures only to get back to the truth? No, he had entangled himself in his own fraud, and was at the mercy of his servant. He took his line. "Skinner, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 15 [ {anesis}: a conjectural emendation of {aneos}. (Perhaps however, the word was rather {ananeosis}, "after a short time there was a renewal of evils"). Grote wishes to translate this clause, "after a short time there was an abatement of evils," ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... stand, unworthy of a seat with the rest of the company, till I have cleared myself. And now, suppose me to be her, let me hear you charge, and do you hear what the poor culprit can say to it in her own defence. And then answering the conjectural and unproved circumstances, by circumstances as fairly to be supposed favourable, she brought off triumphantly the censured lady; and so much to every one's satisfaction, that she was led to her chair, and voted a double rank in the circle, as the reinstated Miss Fanny Darlington, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... reduced to a general question, and considered as an universal proposition:—unless, indeed, when the mere truth of a matter of fact: is the object: of disquisition: for then the case must be wholly conjectural. We are not, however, to argue like the Peripatetics (who have a neat method of controversy which they derive from Aristotle) but more nervously and pressingly; and general sentiments must be so applied to particular cases, as to leave us ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Etchings, an Essay and a Catalogue (Methuen, 1912), which follows the chronological arrangement of the collection in the British Museum. Numbers that are obelised ({DAGGER}) are plates of doubtful authenticity; starred numbers (*) refer to plates not represented in the British Museum. Conjectural dates are cited within brackets. Except for Nos. 144 (frontispiece), 139 and 164 (on same plate as No. 40), and 196 (on same plate as No. 175), the etchings reproduced (entirely from the British Museum collection) are given in the order ...
— Rembrandt, With a Complete List of His Etchings • Arthur Mayger Hind
... been made, in the course of centuries, by eminent expositors, to assign to many of the Mosaic ordinances motives of various characters, rationalistic and metaphysical, sanitary, political, and mystical, but all more or less conjectural. To the religious man the positive knowledge of the true motives is not at all essential for the performance of the divine precepts; and in the words of our author himself, as stated elsewhere, "we have to bow reverently before ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... certain that much examination and inquiry have failed to show that it is contained in that language. That it is "the talk of the ould Picts—thim that built the stone houses like beehives"—is, I confess, too conjectural for a philologist. I have no doubt that when the Picts were suppressed thousands of them must have become wandering outlaws, like the Romany, and that their language in time became a secret tongue of vagabonds on the roads. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... a spiritual substance of his soul, has contented himself with administering to it spiritual remedies, which either have no influence over his temperament, or do it an injury. The doctrine of the spirituality of the soul has rendered morals a conjectural science, that does not furnish a knowledge of the true motives which ought to be put in activity, in order to influence man to his welfare. If, calling experience to his assistance, man sought out the elements which form the basis of his temperament, or of the greater number of the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... region traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of her ignorance, was pleased to denominate my disadvantages. She knew not the power of genius. To me these—well, I'll call them defects—have been the source of great profit. For years I have walked about the great metropolis without any known or even conjectural means of subsistence; my coat has always been without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... with a sense of this danger, and with impatience to take a nearer view of the new objects that greeted my eyes. The Brahmin was wholly absorbed in calculations for the purpose of adjusting our velocity to the distance we had to go, his estimates of which, however, were in a great measure conjectural; and ever and anon he would let off a ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees that the oracle can lie, and, therefore, "Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of truth." The explanation is, of course, somewhat conjectural. Homer, who was certainly not a free-thinker, made his deities sufficiently ridiculous, and, at times, altogether odious. Mr. Lang says with truth: "When Homer touches on the less lovable humours of women—on the nagging shrew, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... [67] This conjectural science is divided into natural and judicial. The first is confined to the study of exploring natural effects, as change of weather, winds and storms—hurricanes, thunder, floods, earthquakes, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... conviction of his own importance led him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton; but the inference derives support from the words, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... occurs on coins, while nine models of this symbol hang from a ring carried by the god with the wheel, but the most probable is that which sees in it a thunderbolt.[993] But lacking any old text interpreting these various symbols, all explanations of them must be conjectural. Some of them are not purely Celtic, but ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... will do this and that for me text reads this aud that [o], [p] footnote locations are conjectural: ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... himself to Raphael, which has unfortunately been lost. There appears to have been quite a rage for Duerer's work in Italy, and above all at Rome: we know that it provoked Michael Angelo to remonstrate; probably on many lips it was merely a vaunt of superior knowledge or taste, as rapture over the conjectural friends or aids of a great quatrocentist is to-day. The tokens of esteem which he won from distinguished travellers, and this drawing which reached him testifying to the interest and friendship felt for him by the Italian whose fame was most widespread, must have been full of encouragement, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... example, in 1950, there were insufficient nuts to meet the 25 nut sample required by the contest judges. All available nuts, some probably inferior, were entered, and it is a matter of conjecture whether the nuts might have been judged higher under different circumstances. Also conjectural are the questions of crop size and regularity of bearing in the event the tree was ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... at the same time he puts aside with just indignation Pope's supercilious talk about the "dull duty of an editor"; and after giving an admirable summary of what that dull duty is, declares that one part of it alone, the business of conjectural criticism, "demands more than humanity possesses." Yet it is that part of his functions, the part which appeals most to vanity, that he exercised with the most sparing caution. He saw that it was not in emendation but in interpretation that the critic could now be most useful. For this last ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... settled: Being restored from the Blunders of the first editors and the Interpolations of the two Last"; yet he based his text on Theobald's and joined Pope's name with his own on the title-page. Whatever value belongs to Warburton's edition (1747) lies in a number of probable conjectural emendations, some of which he had previously allowed Theobald to use, and in the amusing bombast and arrogance of many of his notes. The feeble support that lay behind the pretensions of this editor was exposed by a number of critics such as John Upton, Zachary ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... ultimate cost, the estimates of the majority are very much more indefinite and conjectural than the more carefully prepared estimates of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers. Upon this point the majority of the ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... devoted to searching for dinosaurs in the Jurassic and Cretaceous formations of the West, he did not obtain any skeletons of carnivorous kinds anywhere near as complete as these, and their anatomy was in many respects unknown or conjectural. By comparison of the three Allosaurus skeletons with one another and with other specimens of carnivorous dinosaurs of smaller size in this and other museums, particularly in the National Museum and the Kansas University Museum, we have been able to reconstruct ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... Gen. Johnston has surrendered his army in North Carolina, following the example of Gen. Lee. But no salutes have been fired in honor of the event. The President (Davis) is supposed to be flying toward the Mississippi River, but this is merely conjectural. Undoubtedly the war is at an end, and the Confederate States Government will be immediately extinct—its members fugitives. From the tone of leading Northern papers, we have reason to believe President Lincoln will call Congress together, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... some six hundred persons, yet not one of his particular company was ever brought to trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these leaders who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must be altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Gov. Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... this poem was never finished or published was because the project of building a hotel was abandoned. I have taken the liberty to give as a title for it "The Plaint of the Merrimac." As it was written in almost undecipherable hieroglyphics, some of the words are conjectural:— ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... large number of such footprints showed that any opinion that could be formed therefrom of the nature of the motion of the drop must be largely conjectural, and it occurred to me about eighteen years ago to endeavour by means of the illumination of a suitably-timed electric spark to watch a drop through ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... indeed supposes them to have been places of burial; which is very natural for a person to imagine, who was not acquainted with the antient worship of the people. Thevenot also says, that he [689]went into the caverns, and saw several stone coffins. But this merely conjectural: for the things, to which he alludes, were not in the shape of coffins, and had undoubtedly been placed there as cisterns for water, which the Persians used in their nocturnal lustrations. This we may, in great measure, learn from his own words: for he says, that these reservoirs were square, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... absence of certain knowledge, conjectural opinions, such as the writer has here educed, are not unprofitable; rather the reverse. To form them, the writer and the reader place themselves perforce nearly in Cervera's actual position, and ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... illustrations. They are all necessarily conjectural, and may be all false; but they were the best I could give. The bear case (110/4. "Origin of Species," Edition I., page 184. See Letter 120.) has been well laughed at, and disingenuously distorted by some into my saying that a bear could ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... so conjectural and balanced on both sides that at present I conceive that no one can decide: for my own part, I lean to the probability of most of our domestic animals having descended from more than one wild stock; though from the arguments last advanced and from reflecting on the slow though inevitable ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... A. Many conjectural opinions on this much-contested question have been entertained, yet it still remains to be satisfactorily elucidated. Some would derive it from the East and ascribe its introduction to the Crusaders; some maintain that it was suggested by the ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... our own appetites. I cannot feel sure how my voting will affect the condition of Central Asia in the coming ages, but I have good reason to believe that the future populations there will be none the worse off because I abstain from conjectural vilification of my opponents during the present parliamentary session, and I am very sure that I shall be less injurious to my contemporaries. On the whole, and in the vast majority of instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of the sort ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Dielontes].] An excellent conjectural emendation of Holtzmann for the old reading [Greek: dielthontes]. Kuehner.—The stratagem of Tissaphernes was similar to that by which Themistocles expedited the departure of ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... Whilst this conjectural strategy attributes to Joshua a ready grasp of the essential features of the military position and skill in dealing with them, it certainly does not attribute to him any greater skill than it is ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... affectionately, saying, 'Dear sir, do not forget me!' We settled, that he should write an account of the Isle of Sky, which Dr Johnson promised to revise. He said, Mr M'Queen should tell all that he could; distinguishing what he himself knew, what was traditional, and what conjectural. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... at Repton. At Worth in Sussex, where the north and south doorways of the nave are Saxon, and there is no western entrance or original tower, there are large Saxon chapels projecting from the eastern part of the nave, and entered by wide arches. The cruciform plan is sufficiently marked in the conjectural restorations of Deerhurst and Repton. At Worth it ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... Absinthe had suddenly passed from unreasoning distrust to unquestioning confidence. Henceforth, he could believe anything for the very same reason that had, at first, made him believe nothing. Having no idea of the bounds of human reasoning and penetration, he saw no limits to the conjectural genius of his companion. With perfect faith, therefore, he inquired: "And what was the accomplice saying to the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... middle ages, we have no means of judging. The few instances that have accidentally been recorded are totally inadequate to enable us to form an opinion. The extravagant estimate given by some as to the value of books in those days is merely conjectural, as it necessarily must be, when we remember that the price was guided by the accuracy of the transcription, the splendor of the binding, which was often gorgeous to excess, and by the beauty and richness of the illuminations.[77] ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... especially at the well-appetized age which precedes twenty years, are seldom so much engaged either by real or conjectural subjects of speculation, but that their earthly wants claim their hour of attention. And with many a smile did our hero, so the reader may term him if he will, hail the re-appearance of his friend Adam Woodcock, bearing on one platter a tremendous portion of boiled beef, and on another ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Commentaries on the History of the Jews, composed, added to or modified by many men, extending over a period of twenty centuries, also add their weight, even though the value of these Commentaries is conjectural. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... all Cheveleigh and half Ormersfield, till the last unfortunate wheal failed when the rope broke, and there were no funds to buy a new one. No wonder Lord Ormersfield trembled when he heard his son launch out into those easily-ascending conjectural calculations, freely working sums in his head, so exactly like the old Earl, his grandfather, that she could have laughed, but for sympathy with the father, and anxiety to see how the son would take the damp so vexatiously ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the infinite void of the conjectural world, our business is with what is likely to be affected, for the better or the worse, by the wisdom or weakness of our plans. In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish things of accident from permanent causes, and from effects ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... vortex-ring would do in an incompressible frictionless fluid. Thus the startling question is suggested, Why may not the ultimate atoms of matter be vortex-rings forever existing in such a frictionless fluid filling the whole of space? Such a hypothesis is not less brilliant than Huyghens's conjectural identification of light with undulatory motion; and it is moreover a legitimate hypothesis, since it can be brought to the test of verification. Sir William Thomson has shown that it explains a great many of the physical properties of matter: it remains ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... necessary information be thus obtained, the writer will repine at no censure which the precipitate publication of mere conjectural suggestions may incur; but shall think himself fully rewarded by having excited the attention of those, who may point out the most appropriate means of relieving a tedious and ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... in the fifth conversation, the story of Cupid and Psyche was told with fitting beauty, by Margaret; and many fine conjectural interpretations suggested from all parts of the room. The ninth conversation turned on the distinctive qualities of poetry, discriminating it from the other fine arts. Rhythm and Imagery, it was agreed, were distinctive. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli |
